A doll house translated by rolf fjelde pdf

Recasting "A Doll House": Narcissism As Character Motivation in Ibsen's Play Author(s): Carol Strongin Tufts Source: Comparative Drama, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer 1986), pp. 140-159 Published by: Comparative Drama Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41153229 Accessed: 15-10-2018 19:22 UTC

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Recasting A Doll House: Narcissism As Character Motivation

in Ibsen's Play

Carol Strongin Tufts

I am not a member of the Women's Rights League. Whatever I have written has been without any conscious thought of making propaganda. I have been more the poet and less the social philoso- pher than people generally seem inclined to believe. ... To me it has seemed a problem of mankind in general. And if you read my books carefully you will understand this. . . . My task has been the description of humanity. To be sure, whenever such a description is felt to be reasonably true, the reader will read his own feelings and sentiments into the work of the poet. These are then attributed to the poet; but incorrectly so. Every reader re- molds the work beautifully and neatly, each according to his own personality. Not only those who write but also those who read are poets. They are collaborators. 1

To look again at Ibsen's famous and often-quoted words - his assertion that A Doll House was not intended as propaganda to promote the cause of women's rights - is to realize the sarcasm aimed by the playwright at those nineteenth-century "collaborators" who insisted on viewing his play as a treatise and Nora, his heroine, as the romantic standard-bearer for the feminist cause. Yet there is also a certain irony implicit in such a realization, for directors, actors, audiences, and critics turning to this play a little over one hundred years after its first per- formance bring with them the historical, cultural, and psycho- logical experience which itself places them in the role of Ibsen's collaborators. Because it is a theatrical inevitability that each dramatic work which survives its time and place of first per-

CAROL STRONGIN TUFTS is Assistant Professor of English at Oberlin College. She has published on Chekhov, and an article on Shakespeare's Macbeth is forth- coming. She is currently at work on an extended study of Chekhov's major plays.

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formance does so to be recast in productions mounted in succeeding times and different places, A Doll House can never so much be simply reproduced as it must always be re-envi- sioned. And if the spectacle of a woman walking out on her husband and children in order to fulfill her "duties to [herjself ' is no longer the shock for us today that it was for audiences at the end of the nineteenth century, a production of A Doll House which resonates with as much immediacy and power for us as it did for its first audiences may do so through the discovery within Ibsen's text of something of our own time and place. For in A Doll House, as Rolf Fjelde has written, "[i]t is the entire house . . . which is on trial, the total complex of relationships, including husband, wife, children, servants, up- stairs and downstairs, that is tested by the visitors that come and go, embodying aspects of the inescapable reality outside."2 And a production which approaches that reality through the experience of Western culture in the last quarter of the twentieth century may not only discover how uneasy was Ibsen's relation- ship to certain aspects of the forces of Romanticism at work in his own society, but, in so doing, may also come to fashion a Doll House which shifts emphasis away from the celebration of the Romantic belief in the sovereignty of the individual to the revelation of an isolating narcissism - a narcissism that has become all too familiar to us today. 3

The characters of A Doll House are, to be sure, not alone in dramatic literature in being self-preoccupied, for self-pre- occupation is a quality shared by characters from Oedipus to Hamlet and on into modern drama. Yet if a contemporary production is to suggest the narcissistic self-absorption of Ibsen's characters, it must do so in such a way as to imply motivations for their actions and delineate their relationships with one another. Thus it is important to establish a conceptual frame- work which will provide a degree of precision for the use of the term 'narcissism' in this discussion so as to distinguish it from the kind of self-absorption which is an inherent quality neces- sarily shared by all dramatic characters. For that purpose, it is useful to turn to the criteria established by the Task Force on Nomenclature and Statistics of the American Psychiatric Asso- ciation for diagnosing the narcissistic personality:

A. Grandiose sense of self-importance and uniqueness, e.g., exag- gerates achievements and talents, focuses on how special one's problems are.

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B. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, bril- liance, beauty, or ideal love.

C. Exhibitionistic: requires constant attention and admiration. D. Responds to criticism, indifference of others, or defeat with either cool indifference, or with marked feelings of rage, inferi- ority, shame, humiliation, or emptiness.

E. At least two of the following are characteristics of disturbances in interpersonal relationships: (1) Lack of empathy: inability to recognize how others feel,

e.g., unable to appreciate the distress of someone who is seriously ill.

(2) Entitlement: expectation of special favors without assum- ing reciprocal responsibilities, e.g., surprise and anger that people won't do what he wants.

(3) Interpersonal exploita veness : takes advantage of others to indulge own desires for self-aggrandizement, with disre- gard for the personal integrity and rights of others.

(4) Relationships characteristically vacillate between the ex- tremes of over-idealization and devaluation.4

These criteria, as they provide a background against which to consider Nora's relationship with both Kristine Linde and Dr. Rank, will serve to illuminate not only those relationships themselves, but also the relationship of Nora and her husband which is at the center of the play. Moreover, if these criteria are viewed as outlines for characterization - but not as reductive

psychoanalytic constructs leading to "case studies" - it becomes possible to discover a Nora of greater complexity than the totally sympathetic victim turned romantic heroine who has inhabited most productions of the play. And, most important of all, as Nora and her relationships within the walls of her "doll house" come to imply a paradigm of the dilemma of all human rela- tionships in the greater society outside, the famous sound of the slamming door may come to resonate even more loudly for us than it did for the audiences of the nineteenth century with a profound and immediate sense of irony and ambiguity, an irony and ambiguity which could not have escaped Ibsen himself.

Thus to take up first the relationship of Nora and Kristine Linde, a reading of the initial conversation between the two women reveals a certain narcissistic motivation behind Nora's

response to her old friend. A director staging the scene might here discover a woman who becomes progressively exhibition- istic as she displays her own happiness and good fortune in the face of Kristine's misery, a woman who, filled with a sense of

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her own importance in managing the loan which saved Torvalďs life, makes Kristine into the audience so long denied her, a kind of mirror to reflect her own self-admiration back to her. Al-

though she makes use of Kristine as a confidante, she appears to have little sense of her as a person separate from herself and no real empathy for her suffering. In fact, her initial treatment of her suggests a self-absorption which borders on callousness as she chatters away about her own happiness and good fortune to this childhood friend who, left with nothing, has come to ask a job of her husband.

Although it may be argued that her initial conversation with Kristine is little more than a part of the machinery of the well-made play, providing the necessary "occasion" that enables the playwright to set out his exposition, Ibsen could have created a Nora who displays genuine empathy and compassion for her childhood friend. Instead, it is possible to find a character whose self-preoccupation leads her, at best, to trivialize and, at worst, to dismiss the situation and suffering of her friend, as in this first conversation between the two women:

MRS. LINDE (in a dispirited and somewhat hesitant voice) . Hello, Nora.

NORA, (uncertain). Hello - MRS. LINDE. You don't recognize me. NORA. No, I don't know - but wait, I think - (Exclaiming.)

What! Kristine! Is it really you? MRS. LINDE. Yes, it's me. NORA. Kristine! To think I didn't recognize you. But then,

how could I? (More quietly.) How you've changed, Kristine! MRS. LINDE. Yes, no doubt I have. In nine - ten long years. NORA. Is it so long since we met! Yes, it's all of that. Oh,

these last eight years have been a happy time, believe me. And so now you've come in to town, too. Made the long trip in the winter. That took courage. ... To enjoy yourself over Christmas, of course. Oh, how lovely! Yes, enjoy ourselves, we'll do that. . . . (Act I; p. 130)5

And although she goes on to remark that Kristine has grown paler and thinner since the last time they met, Nora essentially glosses over the implications of the great change in her friend to bubble over with her own happiness and to assume that because she will be enjoying herself this Christmas, Kristine must be in town to do the same.

While there is, on one level, a certain degree of nervousness here in Nora's initial reaction to Kristine - a desire to hide her

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shock at Kristine's changed appearance through a kind of good-natured obtuseness - there may also be, on a deeper level for an actress playing the part, a wish to avoid the need to acknowledge the reasons for the change she sees in the other woman. And what such a wish comes to imply as the conver- sation continues is her failure to see Kristine as a separate person, a person whose pain is as real, as legitimate, as her own joy. Here is Nora, who has made her entrance this Christmas Eve "humming happily to herself," carrying "an armload of packages," possessing money enough to tell the delivery boy to "keep the change" for the crown which she gives him (Act I; p. 125). In her own home and about to become financially well- off as Kristine is not, Nora finds her attractiveness and vitality daily verified by the attentions of her husband and Dr. Rank. In contrast, Kristine, homeless and dressed in traveling clothes, is a woman worn out and devoid of all but the most modest of

expectations, her complete exhaustion exemplified by the fact that she has been passed coming up the stairs by Dr. Rank, himself dying of congenital degeneration of the spine and so not the fastest person on his feet (Act I; p. 139).

Kristine, of course, is used by Ibsen as a foil to Nora, who will become homeless precisely as her old friend acquires a home. She will find herself alone in the world just as Kristine ends her own loneliness in marriage to Krogstad. Yet as the play begins, Nora, caught up in her satisfaction in the prospect of being able to pay off the loan and in her joy and pride in her home and family and in Torvald's promotion at the bank, only acknowledges that Kristine has become a widow after she has remarked on how happy the last eight years have been for herself. "Oh, I knew it, of course," Nora admits; "I read it in the papers. Oh, Kristine, you must believe me; I often thought of writing you then, but I kept postponing it, and something always interfered." But Nora's stress here remains on herself. As Kristine goes on to say that she now has nothing, neither children nor money, she can respond, "So completely alone. How terribly hard that must be for you," only immediately to add, "I have three lovely children. You can't see them now; they're out with the maid." Consistent with her behavior up to this point, she plays lip service to Kristine's hardships one minute only to flaunt her own blessings the next, for Nora, who adores seeing her children, assumes that her impoverished and childless friend must adore seeing them too and never

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supposes that the sight of those children might instead intensify Kristine's childlessness and desolation. Although she does go on to insist that Kristine "tell" her "everything," for, Nora says, "I don't want to be selfish. I want to think only of you today," she cannot help adding, "But there is something I must tell you. Did you hear the wonderful luck we had recently?" (Act I; p. 131). And with this question, Nora has managed again to turn the subject of the conversation back to herself.

Now Nora can go on to report that Torvald has been made manager of the bank. Ironically, this is probably the only news in which Kristine has any real interest, since it is possible that she has endured Nora's self-congratulatory chatter only because it is she who is Kristine's entrée to Torvald, the successful man who might be prevailed upon to help her to find a job. What is most important here, however, is that Nora seems unable, for all her stated desire to do so, to focus on Kristine herself. It is only after Nora has told how "light and happy" she feels, for it will be "lovely to have stacks of money and not a care in the world" - this to someone who has been left with nothing, "[n]ot even a sense of loss to feed on" (Act I; p. 131) - and has talked about the difficult period of Torvald's illness, that she pulls herself up short to say, "But how disgusting of me - I'm talking of nothing but my own affairs" (Act I; p. 133). Yet so far, Nora has done little else.

For a while after this the conversation turns to Kristine, who describes her last three years as "one endless workday without rest." Yet now with her mother dead and her brothers able to

provide for themselves, Kristine can only reply to Nora's "How free you must feel" with "No - only unspeakably empty. Nothing to live for now." To try to fill up that emptiness, as well as out of financial necessity, she has come to town to find a "steady job, some office work" (Act I; p. 133). But it is as if Nora has managed not to hear the desperation in her words and, identify- ing only with the work that she too has had to take on, says, "Oh, but Kristine, that's so dreadfully tiring, and you already look so tired. It would be much better for you if you would go off to a bathing resort." Again, Nora's response, as it suggests her inability to recognize how Kristine feels, also suggests her narcissism, for although Nora can understand having had to work hard - after all, she has had to do that herself - she seems unable to comprehend the utter desolation which exhausts Kristine now that her "burdens" have been removed. And it is

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the callousness implicit in that response which provokes Kris- tine's bitter reply: "I have no father to give me travel money, Nora" (Act I; p. 134). As Kristine finally makes her realize that she has come to

ask Torvald's assistance in finding a job, Nora jumps at the chance to be her intermediary, not only because she is "so eager to help," but also, for a director and an actress responding to Ibsen's suggestion of her narcissism, because she can use the opportunity to demonstrate the power she has over Torvald. "Just leave it to me," she tells Kristine, "I'll bring it up so delicately - find something attractive to humor him with. Oh, I'm so eager to help you." To this Kristine replies, in a line heavy with sarcasm, "How very kind of you, Nora, to be so concerned over me- doubly kind, considering you really know so little of life's burdens yourself" (Act I; p. 134). Kristine's reply, however, is not just an understandable

response to the recital she has had to endure of Nora's happiness and good fortune, nor is it simply an indication of her self- admitted bitterness, for there may also be an implicit sense of pride here which points to her own narcissism. Beneath the barely disguised sarcasm of her words is the suggestion of Kristine's sense of her own importance, her belief that her problems and her sacrifices have not only been greater than those of Nora, but that they are, by implication, unique in the world, that they make her somehow special, superior. If Kris- tine's line is read with such a suggestion in mind - and if she herself is considered from what, for an actress playing the part, could very well be her own view of Nora's treatment of her throughout the play as little more than a prop, or convenience, in a relationship without mutual concern or reciprocity - the motivation Ibsen has provided for her actions at the end of the play takes on a new complexity as she deters Krogstad from asking for the return of the letter that has been the source of Nora's agony.

On the surface of it, Torvald must, of course, read that letter, since that is what brings about the play's denouement, and Kristine is speaking for Ibsen when she says, "I've seen such incredible things in this house. Helmer's got to learn everything; this dreadful secret [Nora's forging of her father's signature in order to procure the loan] has to be aired; those two have to come to a full understanding; all these lies and evasions can't go on" (Act ΠΙ; p. 179). Also, in terms of the

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play's structure, it is obvious that Nora treats Kristine as little more than a prop because that is the way Ibsen treats her: it is Kristine's presence which provides the opportunity for Nora to express those feelings which she must keep hidden from Torvald. Yet beneath the matter of the play's mechanics, it is possible to see Kristine's own narcissism as a subconscious force which

compels her not only to desire some revenge against the friend who has always been luckier and more privileged than she - who has, in fact, ironically turned out to have problems that surpass her own in their uniqueness - but which also causes her to feel firm in her conviction that her hardships and suffering have conferred moral superiority upon her: in her own eyes, she believes herself absolutely justified in knowing what will be best for the Helmers' marriage.

To see narcissism as a subconscious motive for Kristine's action here is also to see a certain irony in her desire to marry Krogstad. Another of the gears in the machinery of Ibsen's well-made play, that marriage, founded as it seems to be on truth and equality between the partners, is meant to function as the foil to the marriage of the Helmers, the realistically attainable possibility which they have failed to achieve. Yet as she proposes that "we two shipwrecked people . . . reach across to each other," Kristine tells Krogstad,

I have to go on living. All my born days, as long as I can remem- ber, IVe worked, and it's been my best and my only joy. But now I'm completely alone in the world; it frightens me to be so empty and lost. To work for yourself - there's no joy in that. Nils, give me something - someone to work for. (Act III; p. 178)

By placing the emphasis here on the urgency of Kristine's own needs, an actress may find that what she is really asking is that Krogstad return to her the sense of self that she lost when her mother died and her brothers became self-sufficient. When

Krogstad, all too aware of his status as social outcast, can only reply, "And do you really have the courage then?" Kristine's answer again places her own longing first as she says, "I need to have someone to care for," adding only after this, "and your children need a mother. We both need each other" (Act III; p. 178).

With the hint of narcissistic motivation for Kristine's pro- posal to Krogstad comes the irony that what she is attempting to reproduce is the one situation that made her feel unique and important, for she will care and work and sacrifice for the

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morally crippled Krogstad and his children as she had cared and worked and sacrificed for her invalid mother and younger brothers. Such a relationship is the only one that she desires, the only one she can envision, not because she is inherently selfless, but because it allows her to maintain an idealized image of herself. Krogstad may say, "I don't believe all this. It's just some hysterical feminine urge to go out and make a noble sacrifice," and Kristine may answer, "Have you ever found me to be hysterical?" (Act ΙΠ; p. 178), but earlier she has also told him, "you've never understood me" (Act ΙΠ; p. 176). The irony here is that such understanding might allow him to know that her "urge to go out and make a noble sacrifice" is not motivated by hysteria so much as it may be motivated by the narcissistic need to recreate the one situation that has made

her feel important and unique and without which she feels empty, a situation in which he and his children will serve as props for her own idealized sense of self.

It is that air of self-important uniqueness that lies behind Kristine's condescending tone in remarking Nora's kindness toward her - considering, as Kristine sees it, how little of "life's burdens" the other woman really knows - and it is her attitude that prompts Nora to confess the "big thing": that it was she who raised the money necessary for the trip to Italy that saved Torvalďs life (Act I; p. 134). When the astonished Kristine asks her how she could have obtained the money, Nora replies, "I could have gotten it from some admirer or other. After all, a girl with my ravishing appeal - " (Act I; p. 136), and later goes on to speak of her fantasy of a "rich old gentleman who had fallen in love with me ... [a]nd . . . died, and when his will was opened, there in big letters it said, 'All my fortune shall be paid over in cash, immediately, to that enchanting Mrs. Nora Helmeť" (Act I; pp. 137-38). Told only half in jest, this fantasy not only foreshadows the scene Nora will play out with Dr. Rank in Act II, but it also reveals Nora's keen awareness of the power of her "ravishing appeal."

It is that "appeal" which she knows to be, but will not acknowledge as the basis of her relationship with Dr. Rank: the sexually charged subtext of this "friendship" in which Nora can be seductive and Rank seduced, but only so long as neither admits that this is what is really happening. Even more import- ant, however, it is also that "ravishing appeal" which Nora knows to be at the center of her relationship with Torvald, for

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as she goes on to tell Kristine about the loan, she speaks of it as a secret to be held in reserve for "sometime, years from now, when I'm no longer so attractive . . . when Torvald loves me less than now, when he stops enjoying my dancing and dressing up and reciting for him" (Act I; pp. 136-37). And although Nora immediately dismisses this possibility as "ridiculous! That'll never happen," it is her knowledge that her "beautiful, happy home" is built on that "appeal," the perfect complement to Torvald's "masculine pride," that suggests the mutually narcis- sistic terms of their marriage. Moreover, Nora's seemingly sudden transformation from the "little lark" of the first two acts to the determined woman of the third act who is able to slam the door on her "doll house" and walk out into the world becomes much less sudden if it is seen that the narcissistic terms

of that marriage cease to be mutual from the moment Torvald reacts to Krogstad's letter.

As Nora talks to Kristine, admirable as her resourcefulness in obtaining and repaying the loan may be, her confession implies a kind of competition over who has endured the most and worked the hardest and ends as a device to elicit the other

person's astonishment and awe. If Kristine takes pride in her sacrifices for her mother and brothers, Nora not only proves that she too has been capable of sacrifice, but that the terms of that sacrifice have been much more daring. Like Kristine, Nora views her problems and her deeds as unique; and although it is true that her obtaining of the loan has indeed been unique insofar as she is a woman in a society in which women, to look ahead to the resonant line from Hedda Gabler, "don't do such things," her act of forgery has been committed by others before her: Krogstad, after all, is at the bottom of the social ladder because, as he says, "it was nothing more and nothing worse that I once did - and it wrecked my whole reputation" (Act I; p. 149). As for Nora's hardships - her husband's illness, her scrimping and saving and working at copying at night to repay the loan - they, too, are not unique, for the mere presence of Kristine, as well as of Dr. Rank, attests to human suffering as a commonplace occurrence. And it is Nora's failure to respond to Kristine's pain with any real degree of empathy that hints at a narcissism which will also carry over into her relationship with Dr. Rank. It becomes, therefore, quite in keeping with Nora's character that she can say as Kristine leaves to see about finding a room, "What a shame we're so cramped here, but it's

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quite impossible for us to - " (Act I; p. 142) - sentiments echoed by Torvald in Act III as he returns late at night from the masquerade party upstairs and tells Kristine, "I hope you get home all right. I'd be happy to - but you don't have far to go" (p. 182). Although Kristine may be useful as an audience and a mirror to reflect Nora back to herself, the presence of such a house guest would be an inconvenience which she prefers not to have intrude on her holiday. Having listened to, but not really having taken in Kristine's account of her emotional and financial impoverishment, she will not put herself out to make room for her in her "beautiful, happy home." A director and an actress developing the suggestion of nar-

cissism in Nora's first conversation with Kristine can carry that suggestion further in Act Π in the scene which takes place between Nora and Dr. Rank. Here Rank becomes for Nora the

"rich old gentleman" of her fantasy, the way out of Krogstad's blackmail. The crux of this scene involves Nora's sexual teasing of Rank, her hitting him "lightly on the ear" with the flesh- colored silk stockings she has been dangling before him under the pretext of displaying part of the costume she will wear to dance the tarantella on the following night (Act II; p. 164). The effect of all this is that Rank responds to her request for "an exceptionally big favor," a "great proof" of his "friendship," with the confession of his love for her, a confession which first causes her to call for a lamp to be brought in and then to say, "Ah, dear Dr. Rank, that was really mean of you."

In order to see how this scene works in terms of the narcis-

sism that has already been implied by Nora's conversation with Kristine, it is first necessary to acknowledge Rank's most im- portant functions in the mechanism of Ibsen's well-made play. As is obvious, Ibsen has created Rank, this friend of both husband and wife, as a means of clarifying the play's main issue and building the case which must culminate in Nora's departure from her husband and children. Thus Rank serves to emphasize Torvald's limitations, his shallowness, and his lack of courage and compassion, for Rank, who knows that he is dying and that the process will not be a pretty one, knows too that Torvald "with his sensitivity" has "a sharp distaste for anything ugly," and so tells Nora, "I don't want him near my sickroom. ... I won't have him there. Under no condition. I'll lock my door to him" (Act II; p. 163). Also, as the walking emblem of the sins of the parents being visited upon their children, Rank's dying

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of congenital syphilis helps to provide motivation for Nora's decision to leave her children, since she believes that "The way I am now, I'm no use to them" (Act ΙΠ; p. 195), an idea reinforced in her mind by Torvald's earlier pronouncement, made in reference to Krogstad, that "It's usually the mother's influence that's dominant" on children who "go bad" (Act I; p. 152). Moreover, Nora's friendship with Rank also reveals how much of herself her relationship with her husband has cost her, for as she tells Kristine,

Torvald loves me beyond words, and, as he puts it, he'd like to keep me all to himself. For a long time he'd almost be jealous if I even mentioned any of my old friends back home. So of course I dropped that. But with Dr. Rank I talk a lot about such things, because he likes hearing about them. (Act II; p. 157)

It is, therefore, no wonder that Nora can so ironically say in describing to Rank the difference in her feelings for Torvald and for him, "you see, there are some people that one loves most and other people that one would almost prefer being with" (Act II; p. 166).

Yet the underlying narcissism which has caused Nora to be so tactlessly obtuse in her conversation with Kristine can now be seen as leading her into unconscious cruelty in her manipulation of Rank whom she tantalizes with her silk stockings in a des- perate attempt to make fantasy into reality and to transform him into the dreamed-of "rich old gentleman" so taken with her "ravishing appeal" that he becomes her financial savior. In so doing, not only does she exploit his feelings with no regard for his personal integrity - the cost to him of confessing his love and the importance he places on that confession as he tells her, "I swore to myself you should know this before I'm gone" (Act Π; p. 165) - but she also fails to appreciate the literal reality which has prompted him to speak at all: his knowledge that "Within a month I'll probably be laid out and rotting in the churchyard. . . . But the worst of it is all the other horror before it's over" (Act II; p. 162). What angers and appalls Nora is not that Rank loves her, but that in telling her of that love he has done exactly the one thing which she has not wanted him to do, for, as she says, "you came out and told me. That was quite unnecessary. . . . Why did you have to be so clumsy, Dr. Rank! Everything was so good" (Act II; pp. 165-66). For the actress playing Nora, the "everything" that was "so good" may be felt as a narcissistic sense of entitlement with its freedom

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to allow her to bask in Rank's attention and admiration, even to ask "an exceptionally big favor" of him, without ever having to acknowledge her responsibility in eliciting the feelings which she knows, even before he says it, place his "body and soul" at her "command." And thus the final cruelty here becomes her failure to consider how that "everything" must have felt to Rank himself, how what was "so good" for her was, ironically, so bittersweet for him.

To see Nora's behavior in this scene with Rank as being consistent with the narcissism that has already been implied as motivation for many of her words and actions up to this point is to go beyond the need for the usual kind of justification for that behavior such as that offered, for example, by a critic like F. L. Lucas who begins with the assumption that "grief is egotistic" so that he may go on to insist:

Nora, under the shadow of her own disaster, cannot really believe in his. Here, indeed, she may seem a little too obtuse. She is not callously selfish. . . ; she is simply, in her worried distraction, insensitive and blind. And so, self-centred like a child on her own perplexities, but hoping for help from her old friend, she now slips into innocent coquetries, which kindle this lonely man on the edge of the grave to a guarded declaration of passion. 6

Yet even Lucas must admit that "it is Nora" who, "in this instant, grows ťugly'"7 And though he may rationalize that ugliness by seeing Nora as the victim of a "father-fixation" which causes her to view Rank as a father substitute, "a kind of sugar-daddy" whom she can play with and tease but to whom "she cannot give ... the sympathetic compassion of a mature woman, only the petulance of a priggish child,"8 this incident of the silk stockings is indeed so jarring to the totally sympa- thetic romantic view of Nora that its distastefulness may have led Eva Le Gallienne to cut it from her translation of the play.9

Complete sympathy for Nora, however, may require cutting all those "ugly" words and actions which Ibsen himself gave her and accepting without criticism the romanticism which she at once embraces and embodies. While it may indeed be true, as Elaine Hoffman Baruch has stated, that Nora "ultimately rejects a romanticism that rests on illusion and fantasy [as] she accepts a more profound romantic value in her assertion of the primacy of the individual over all other claims,"10 it is precisely this "assertion of the primacy of the individual over all other claims" which, as Ibsen has drawn it here, may be seen as causing this

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Carol Strongin Tufts 153

character to become as much a victimizer as she is a victim, as much the exploiter of others as she has been exploited by them. What is important, as Patricia Meyer Spacks has pointed out, is to recognize that while "Nora is self-dramatizing too, . . . Ibsen never allows us to accept her at her own valuation. Much of the tension, the vitality, the complexity of Ibsen's play derives from this fact." H Moreover, Nora is not the only character engaged in self-dramatization, driven by a need to see an ideal- ized image of herself reflected back to her in the eyes of others. This, after all, is what Kristine has also attempted and, though in one aspect she has failed as the tremendous energy of Nora's need has come to dominate her own, she does finally succeed when Krogstad allows her, in essence, to make her "noble sacrifice" for him and his children. It is this same kind of self-

dramatization which also provides much of the motivation for Rank's behavior, not only in his speeches to Nora about his imminent death, but in the staging of his final farewell to the Helmers, complete with the condemned man's request for a last cigar as he leaves to deposit in their mailbox the calling card marked with "a black cross over the name . . . announcing his own death" (Act III; p. 186).

Thus, as Inga-Stina Ewbank has noted, "For most of this play, the dialogue brings out what the action implies: that the central characters are all playing parts before each other," so that "the fancy dress ball on the floor above, for which there is no plot-necessity, . . . functions as a telling image of human relationships."^ And the irony of Rank's final farewell here is that his carefully staged exit has no more than a momentary effect on the Helmers who, as Ewbank has also noted, are themselves involved in the play's "central game, or part, playing [which] is, of course," their "whole marital relationship."13 Caught up in the scenario of her planned self-sacrifice as she waits for Torvald to read Krogstad's letter and so bring about the "miracle" of which she has been dreaming, Nora can only react to the announcement of Rank's imminent death by trans- forming it into her own as she tells Torvald, "If it has to happen, then it's best it happens in silence" (Act III; p. 186). And Rank ceases to exist for her except as the excuse to put Torvald off sexually so that he may at last read his mail. It is Torvald's own narcissistic reaction to Rank's black-marked

calling cards which foreshadows his equally narcissistic reaction to Krogstad's letter. Sounding very much like the histrionic

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154 Comparative Draina

Hjalmar Ekdal of Ibsen's later play The Wild Duck, Torvalďs initial response implies more about the dramatizing self-con- sciousness of the speaker than it does about any real feeling he might have for the plight of the individual who has occasioned the speech: "Ah, my poor friend!" says Torvald, "Of course I knew he wouldn't be here much longer. But so soon - And then to hide himself away like a wounded animal." For Torvald soon reveals his true feelings as he continues:

He'd grown right into our lives. I simply can't imagine him gone. He with his suffering and loneliness - like a dark cloud setting off our sunlit happiness. Well, maybe it's best this way. For him, at least. . . . And maybe for us too, Nora. Now we're thrown back on each other, completely. (Embracing her.) Oh you, my darling wife, how can I hold you close enough? (Act III; p. 186)

Torvald, in effect, immediately proceeds to answer his own question by revealing his cherished romantic fantasy of himself as gallant knight and his wife as damsel in distress: "You know what, Nora - time and again I've wished you were in some terrible danger, just so I could stake my life and soul and everything for your sake" (Act III; p. 186). But Torvald's fantasy has also been Nora's own, the "miracle" for which she waits. This shared fantasy, which comes to fail them both, can be seen as the central game of their marriage, the very founda- tion of the mutual narcissism which has bound them together. And as he reads Krogstad's letter, it is that foundation itself which begins to crumble. For Torvald, it was Nora's "ravishing appeal" - her "scam-

pering] about and dofing] tricks" (Act II; p. 159), but most of all her "innocence" and "helplessness" - which fed his grand- iose sense of self-importance, providing him with the constant attention and admiration his narcissism required. Yet because Torvald over-idealized Nora as he over-idealized their marriage itself, the news that his "little lark" has not only not been innocent, but that she has in fact also been capable of action in the world outside the "doll house," can, for an actor playing the part, provide motivation for the instant shift Torvald makes from over-idealization to utter devaluation:

Oh, what an awful awakening! In all these eight years - she who was my pride and joy - a hypocrite, a liar - worse, worse - a crim- inal! How infinitely disgusting it all is! The shame! . . . Oh, to have to say this to someone I've loved so much! Well, that's done with. (Act III; pp. 187, 188)

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Carol Strongin Tufts 155

And it is in that "awful awakening" too that the actor playing Torvald in a contemporary production of the play can come to realize an even deadlier threat that this character feels to his

vision of himself, a threat which, like Nora's own action, resides in the world outside the "doll house," for in dealing with Krog- stad, she has placed her husband in the power of the one person who refuses to validate his sense of self-importance. Looking at him, Krogstad does not see the powerful man of affairs, the soon-to-be manager of the bank, but his old teenage "crony" still to be addressed on a "first-name basis ... in front of" all those "others" who possess the ultimate power to confirm or destroy Torvald's image of himself in the greater world out- side the "doll house." Thus it is no wonder that all that now

concerns the panic-stricken Torvald is "saving the bits and pieces, the appearance," since it is "the appearance" which has always been for him "all that matters" (Act ΙΠ; p. 188).

Yet as Krogstaďs second letter arrives and that "appearance" is no longer under threat, though Torvald may shout, "I'm saved. Nora, I'm saved!" (Act III; p. 188), the irony is that he has already destroyed the mutual terms of the narcissism which has bound him together with his wife. It is important, therefore, to reconsider the reason for Nora's act in finally leaving Torvald, since that reason may not be nearly so transparent as the asser- tion of selfhood which most productions of the play have made it - nor as relatively straightforward as a critic such as Baruch, for example, has described it: that is, because he has failed "to live up to her image of him." 14 In fact, that reason finally be- comes even more subtle than Torvald's simply laying bare a narcissistic self-concern in which there has been no care for his

wife. For Ibsen has provided a much more ironic complexity of motivation for Nora's final action if Torvald, in his own self- concern, is viewed as having essentially denied her the ultimate act that could have completed and made perfect her own ideal- ized vision of herself. Nora may indeed have been awaiting the "miracle" in which her husband was supposed to "step forward, take the blame on" himself "and say: I am the guilty one" (Act III; p. 194); but the real essence of that "miracle" would have been her own response, since as she tells her husband:

You're thinking I'd never accept such a sacrifice from you? No, of course not. But what good would my protests be against you? That

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156 Comparative Drama

was the miracle I was waiting for, in terror and hope. And to stave that off, I would have taken my life. (Act III; p. 194)

As Arthur Ganz has pointed out, "Torvald has been, in one of Ibsen's ultimate ironies, almost as much Nora's 'doll' (the puppet-hero of her dreams) as she has been his. . . ."15 And the greatest irony of all may be that what that "puppet-hero" has denied her has not been his own sacrifice for her sake, but rather the opportunity to prevent his sacrifice with a more daring one of her own. What was to be accomplished by such a sacrifice is not necessarily, as Ganz has seen it, "the abnegation of the self that she had assented to in her doll's house," 16 but rather the narcissistic affirmation of an idealized self which will never

have to face the time when, as Nora has feared from the beginning, "Torvald loves me less than now, when he stops enjoying my dancing and dressing up and reciting for him" (Act I; p. 137). In sacrificing herself to save her husband, Nora could have remained forever the perfect object of his love.

Thus to follow Ibsen's suggestion of Nora's narcissism throughout the play also makes it possible to see a more subtle irony in Torvald's failure to perform the "miracle" in which she has placed all her hope. For she has been enthralled by a dream of self-sacrifice from the moment Kristine tells her tale

of suffering in the service of others, and it is that dream which her husband betrays. Robbed of it and of the idealized self- image that has been at its center, she can only respond to him with the rage which, despite its muted quality, is the mirror image of his own response to Krogstad's letter. Because she has over-idealized Torvald as he has over-idealized her, Nora, as her husband has done before her, utterly devaluates the eight years of their marriage. But though she tells him, "You don't understand me. And I've never understood you either - until tonight" (Act III; p. 190), the irony is that they have under- stood each other all too well until tonight when narcissistic need of each to maintain an idealized self-image has come to exclude the identical need of the other.

Stripped of the narcissistic dream of self-sacrifice, Nora now speaks of fulfilling her "Duties to herself"; as she tells Torvald, "I believe that, before all else, I'm a human being, no less than you - or anyway, I ought to try to become one." Yet although our sympathies as an audience are with her as she appears to recognize the hollowness of her former ideal and as she cour- ageously prepares to leave her home so that she may try to

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